Greetings!

I’ve been so busy working on the site that I haven’t actually posted a blog post yet.

I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Wendy LaBarge and I’m your fearless leader around here. Now’s a great time for a first, as I’ve got some things to share, and I’ve got a few minutes to spare. (Whoa… poetry. J)

First, a little background for those who haven’t been following along forever… I began this project back in September of 2017. By spring of 2018, creation of ArtShow.org was in full swing with a full team on board (10 people at one point, I think?) and by summer, we went into complete promotional mode, as we were supposed to launch in October.

One by one, team members started falling off for varied business, personal and health reasons. Two weeks before our launch date, my developer met with me and announced he was quitting the project, but would complete the site. As we all know, that never happened, and while devastated, I remained determined.

I met with a string of developers and heads of programming firms. Very, very few were willing to take on the project that had been started. The particular set of development tools/skills he’d used were not mainstream enough, so there was a dearth of coders to fit the bill. The ones that did respond positively were just completely out of my budget except for one, and his communication was so awful to build a business with him would have been an exercise in hostility management.

I took a couple weeks to think about my options. I bought a few classes at Udemy.com to see if there was any way possible that it was something I could learn. I didn’t get very far in any of them. But while researching options online, I realized that there WAS a way for me to do it myself, without a $60,000 starting price tag attached.

And so, my big secret revealed –

I tossed the entire original version of the website. I’ve been building the whole damn thing over from scratch.

By using WordPress, it’s plugins and software integrations, it’s possible for someone with limited skills like me to figure this out. Web tools have come a long way, baby! So, I bought a bunch of other classes and slowly, I’ve been teaching myself the ropes.

At any given time when you click on the site, you may see something different. Every day, from when I wake up until bedtime (which is often quite late), I’m building this. It’s starting to take shape, and I’m confident that I’m just a few weeks out now from a launch. Stefani Tadio, my right hand since the beginning, is tirelessly putting together the data to display while I give it a frame.

We’ve been sitting on a lot of content from our freelance writers, and that will all be available as soon as we launch, along with the show information you’re all requesting, and a lot more. I know show apps are coming due, and I’m trying my best to get that part situated before the end of January. The rest will roll out as quickly as I can make it happen.

Now, part 2 – this ‘quickly’ thing…

If you’ve been to the site, you may have gotten an evil error 500, where the site won’t load. That’s a server error. That means that what you need to access to SEE the site is down and what I need to access to BUILD the site is down. Quite frankly, it’s pissing me off. But there’s quite literally nothing I can do about it at the moment. There are strict regulations about how often you can move things around between hosts on the interwebs and I haven’t been with the host I’m using (with the crappy server) long enough to switch again. I PROMISE that I’ll be doing that as soon as I can.

While waiting and pressing the reload button a hundred thousand times… this is the ‘time to spare’ part… I’ve been enjoying loads of ART. I recently switched to Apple TV, and found an app to download: the art channel. Produced by the Art Authority, they offer a subscription for pennies a day – just $1 monthly. For less than a cup of coffee, I now have a constant rotation of art slideshows. I can set the display time for each piece from a few seconds to however many minutes I want, or I can do the video version, with nice, soft music.

It got me to wondering what other options are out there. It turns out, a LOT!

I will be writing a whole article about this with plenty of information about what I’ve found. If you’re interested NOW, as a thank you to you all for your continued patience while I bring my passion project to fruition, here is a list of links for choices in the marketplace for digital art. It’s fascinating stuff.